For many years political parties have been branded, normally to show themselves in a good light and the opposition in a poor light.
Initially the terms used were words like “left” and “right” but these have evolved so that the “right” now prefers “pragmatic” or “common-sense driven” as these words differentiate it from right wing extremist groups that like to shoot people.
The “left” has been searching for words that accurately describe it and has tried many.
“Progressive” springs to mind, although I could never work out what that meant; and then of course the big one – “Transparent”. Never has a politician used a word when so obviously meaning the opposite as Jacinda Ardern did when using this one.
Recent letters in The Informer seem to indicate that the left now prefers “science-based” and “evidence-driven”, quite possibly to claim they know what they are talking about and the other side does not. One is forced to ponder upon whether our “evidence-driven” politicians interpret their evidence correctly.
For example a claim that Transport Minister Simeon Brown’s dismissal of recommendations for all day lowered speed limits around schools has recently been criticised by Mr Tegg in the Informer of 29 October.
Simeon Brown is the Minister for Energy, Minister of Local Government, Minister of Transport, Minister for Auckland and Deputy Leader of the House.
The statement that 85% of accidents in school zones occurred outside of drop-off and pick-up times would mean 15% occur within the two hours where the children are picked up or dropped off. Simple maths shows that the pickup and collect time should represent about 8% of accidents so the 15% recorded is a concern.
Has lowering the speed limit resulted in a higher level of accidents? If so let us get rid of these lower speed limits outside schools or at the very least, let’s congratulate the Transport Minister on his clarity of thought.
The point of this example is that evidence is not in itself a conclusion. Mr Tegg has concluded from the evidence that the speed limit should be dropped to 30 Km/hour to save lives, whereas the evidence does not necessarily say this.
To be true to his evidence approach, arguing for 0% would probably get closer to the accident-free goal he appears to be after. But of course the world comes to a halt, so that conclusion wouldn’t be practical.
Singular bits of evidence can sometimes be a distraction. There is criticism of the decision to cut taxes on heated tobacco products because of overwhelming evidence of the harm done by these products. That would be true but there is also over whelming evidence of the harm done to lower income family groups from the exorbitant tax grab taken at the time such products are sold.
When considering social issues such as smoking, one must consider all evidence, from a variety of sources, before coming to a decision for the community.
And then of course we must be careful of contrived evidence, generally dragged up to support a point we wish to make rather than because of any scientific link.
This is a case in point when claiming that LNG is suddenly now 33% worse than coal in terms of emissions of CO2. This “evidence” comes from people who wish to stop the building of an LNG terminal so that we can use imported LNG instead of really dirty imported coal to generate electricity when the lakes are low.
But these people do not want us to use coal either, so I guess they just support power outages. It is ironic that the previous Labour Government banned usage of our coal and our natural gas and now we argue over which – imported coal or imported natural gas – is cleaner. Maybe we should just keep using our cleaner stuff.
I find it rather amusing that our current coalition Government is described in some quarters, generally leftist ones, as ideological. For the past six years the previous Labour Government was accused of this and when such accusations are made, from whatever quarter, the intent seems to be to label the governing party as non-thinking. We don’t really need ideological governments.
What we all need though is that our government, whoever they are, work with our whole country in mind and do what is best for our country.
If this could be done consistently using an agreed infrastructure plan for the country, along with relevant information from many sources, including listening to our communities, taking professional financial advice and of course scientific analysis (not opinion), then we will all start to be better off.
